Development of an Intelligent Strategy for Enhancing Service Life of Power Equipment in a MV Grid Substation

Abstract

The power equipments play a key role in uninterrupted and reliable operation of a newlinesubstation, so, maintaining the health of these power equipments is most essential for newlinesubstation operators. If any equipment fails it affect the whole substation performance newlineso timely maintenance, some reliability centric strategies and new intelligent techniques are necessary to reduce these failures. The major equipment in a substation is transformer, switchgear, circuit breakers and associated devices. In this thesis, a special focus is given on the most critical power equipment because if newlineany critical equipment fails the whole system may fail. The equipments considered for newlinethe investigation are transformer, circuit breaker, switchgear bus-bar and lightening newlinearrester. The power equipments face various abnormal conditions during their newlineoperation that reduces the performance resulting in degradation of component.The newlinevarious stresses encountered by these power equipments are; Electrical stresses newline(corona, surges, and partial discharges), Environmental (moisture, chemicals, and newlinedirt), and Thermal aging.To maintain the health condition of power equipment the newlinevarious maintenance strategies are presented like reactive, preventive, predictive and newlinereliability centred maintenance etc. Contd.... newline